I have to admit I giggled when I got a press release describing this restaurant as being located in the “white-hot West Roxbury-Dedham dining scene.” After all, the space had already killed a reasonably good steak house, Vintage, after a long closure in which it tried to upscale, then ended up downscaling by adding red-sauce Italian dishes. So now we have an Italian steak house in the same place owned by Greek-American partners. Why is this going to be even lukewarm?

Well, they got the next giggle when I tried to walk in on a weekend night and the place was packed with a 90-minute wait. Coming back on a weeknight with a proper reservation, I found an entirely competent and moderate steak house with some bistro dishes that work, and an Italian menu without house-made pasta (though the macaroni and cheese on a porterhouse steak — don’t laugh out loud — was superb).

Even on a weeknight, the place filled up by eight or so, which shows they are doing some things right. Some of those things jumped out: an iceberg wedge salad ($9) that, with a very decent October tomato and some scattered bacon, was like a deconstructed BLT; a porterhouse steak ($32) with more meat on the fillet side than some fillet mignons you will pay more for downtown; delicious roasted sea scallops ($21) served with real pesto; and a mixed-berry dessert ($7) in a tuile shell with custard.

Food starts well with house-made crusty Italian bread, featuring plenty of holes — the better to pick up a pour of olive oil and a fine white-bean paste. Hearts-of-palm salad ($10) had few pieces of palm, but lots of ripe avocado with goat cheese, and slices of yellow heirloom tomato. Only an arugula salad ($9) was overdressed, and included bits of dried fig that would have been better had they been soaked.

Fried calamari ($9) were as fresh and hot and crisp and mild as any outside Chinatown, though the slices of banana pepper and the sweet-chili dip were nothing new or special. A Caribbean sautéed sea-scallops appetizer ($12) — try saying that 10 times fast — brought fine shellfish, but the Caribbean part was an unfortunate combination of fried plantain (a fairly green, starchy one) and mango chutney. Mangoes grow in the Caribbean; chutney comes from India; people from the Caribbean (even those of Asian-Indian ancestry) don’t put mango chutney on plantains. There is a reason for this. Get your scallops in the above-mentioned dinner entrée instead, which also comes with a fried rice cake with real crabmeat, and a shaved fennel slaw.

REVIEW: BONCHON | August 10, 2012 What am I doing in this basement in Harvard Square, reviewing the second location of a multi-national franchise chain?

REVIEW: CARMELINA'S | July 25, 2012 After a good run with "Italian tapas" under the name Damiano (a play on the given name of chef-owner Damien "Domenic" DiPaola), this space has been rechristened as Carmelina's — after the chef's mother and his first restaurant, opened when he was an undergraduate in Western Mass — and the menu reconfigured to feature more entrées.

REVIEW: TONIC | July 06, 2012 Bad restaurant idea number 16: let's do a neighborhood bar-bistro where there already is one.

REVIEW: HAPPY’S BAR AND KITCHEN | June 20, 2012 In a year of bad restaurant ideas, one of the better bets is to have a successful fancy-food chef try a downscale restaurant.